Former Intel Chief Touts Health Care Reform
"[R]isk-averse policymakers" will consider health care reform proposals "only when there's serious money involved," David Lazarus writes in his "Lazarus at Large" column in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Lazarus profiles Andy Grove, former CEO and chair of Intel, and his campaign to overhaul the health care system, specifically proposals to expand retail clinics and boost use of electronic health records.
Grove is advocating a broad system of retail clinics staffed by nurse practitioners, according to Lazarus. Grove says the clinics could help reduce health care costs by avoiding use of hospitals in many cases, especially instances where people are seeking routine care in hospital emergency departments.
With regard to medical records, Grove is pushing for patients' health information to be stored on Web pages that could be accessed by any doctor or nurse. Grove recognizes the possibility for privacy violations in such a system, saying, "You will either learn to live with those breaches or you will retreat behind a wall of paper records" (Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle, 4/13).